#OregonUnderAttack, the New Trend on Twitter

#OregonUnderAttack, the New Trend on Twitter

Ryan Kirkpatrick, Staff Writer

I woke up Sunday morning late at around eleven, having stayed up ‘til the wee hours in morning catching the amazing Arizona State vs. West Virginia bowl game the night/morning before. I made my coffee, then sat down at my computer to catch up on the latest news via Twitter. I typically don’t read any of the trending hashtags, but one at the top caught my eye: #OregonUnderAttack. My first thought was that the tag had to do with the TCU vs. Oregon bowl game, as the Ducks were decimated in an epic comeback by the Horned Frogs. So, I click on the tag, ready to read some posts pertaining to college football. Instead, I’m shocked. Armed militia takes over federal wildlife refuge? Y’all-Qaeda? Vanilla ISIS? What’s going on here? From several minutes of research, I soon learned that this militia was involved with the Bundy’s. Right from reading that name, I knew the situation would be tense.

 

The Bundy’s are a family of ranchers located in Clark County, Nevada, just northeast of Las Vegas. Since 1993, Cliven Bundy and his family have been in a dispute with the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). The BLM leases land to ranchers so they may graze their cattle on it. Bundy, whose lease expired in 1993, continued to graze his cattle on federal land without the proper permission to do so. In 1998, Cliven Bundy was forbidden from allowing his cattle to graze on the BLM land in Clark County, called the Bunkerville Allotment. In July of 2013, Bundy was ordered again to stop trespassing on federal land, when he continued to let his cattle graze in Gold Butte, another federally administered area of land. On March 27th, 2014, federal agents of the BLM shut down over 145,000 acres of federal land in Clark County. On April 5th, the BLM began rounding up Bundy’s trespass cattle that was on federal land. On April 12th, conservative protesters, some armed, approached the BLM to disrupt the round-up of cattle. Militiamen belonging to the Oath Keepers, White Mountain Militia, and Praetorian Guard set up checkpoints and security details around Bundy. Witnesses saw numerous instances where militiamen had federal agents in their sights, ready to fire on them. Fortunately, the standoff ended in May without any injuries or deaths. However, Bundy has yet to remove his cattle from trespassing on federal land.

 

Immediately after the standoff, Bundy was praised by many conservative media outlets as a hero who didn’t cave to the federal government. Cliven Bundy himself doesn’t recognize the authority of the federal government and considers himself a sovereign citizen of the United States, or somebody who believes the federal government should be very limited in their power. Because the land administered by the BLM in Clark County belongs to the federal government, Bundy believes it belongs to the people. However, on April 19th, Bundy was quoted as saying that “African-Americans were better off as slaves, picking cotton than living under government subsidies.” These comments were widely condemned, and many conservative pundits withdrew their support from Bundy’s cause.

 

The situation in Oregon is closely related to the Bundy standoff. Dwight Hammond and his son Steve, both ranchers, own 12,000 acres in Harney County, Oregon. Harney County is over 10,000 square miles, and it’s one of the largest counties in the United States. However, it’s incredibly rural (a five-hour drive from Portland) and has a population of only 7,700 people. Roughly 500 ranchers and farms have cattle, who outnumber people 14 to 1. The Hammonds have routinely allowed their cattle to graze on federal land administered by the BLM without the proper permits, dating back to the mid-1980s. Steve Hammond has made several verbal threats against the BLM, including a threat from 1986 against a public land manager, who was told by Hammond that he would “rip off his head from his neck.” In 1999, Steve Hammond started several fires that were intended to burn sagebrush and juniper trees, but these fires spread to BLM land. The BLM reminded the Hammonds that if these fires continued, legal action would be taken.

 

In 2001, Steve Hammond set another fire on federal land, this time to cover his alleged poaching of deer, which was witnessed by several other hunters. He ordered his nephew, Dusty, to start the fire. At trial in 2012, Dusty testified that Steve abused him after the fire. In 2006, Steve Hammond set yet another fire, this time in the vicinity of four BLM firefighters, who were nearly killed by the blaze. Dwight and Steve Hammond were later convicted, and their case (which consisted of two counts of arson) went to court in 2012. Despite the mandatory minimum sentencing of five years (arson on federal land is considered an act of terror), US District Judge Michael Robert Hogan sentenced Dwight to three months imprisonment and Steve one-year-and-a-day imprisonment, which they both served. Hogan felt that a five-year sentence violated the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution, which prohibits “cruel and unusual punishment”. Federal prosecutors appealed this decision, and the ruling was overturned in October of 2015. Both Dwight and Steve Hammond turned themselves on January 4th, and both men will now have to serve the required mandatory minimum.

 

In December of 2015, Ryan Payne (a member of the West Mountain Rangers, a militia in Montana) and Ammon Bundy (son of Cliven Bundy) set up residence in Burns, Oregon, the county seat of Harvey County. Throughout December, more militias became active in Burns, holding rallies in support of the Hammonds. On January 2nd, a crowd of nearly 300 protesters marched to the Harvey County police station, then to the Hammond’s property. From there, Ammon Bundy, Ryan Payne, and Jon Ritzheimer (a member of the Three Percenters, another militia organization) drove 30 miles south of Burns to the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, which was closed during the holiday season. The US Fish and Wildlife Service, who operate the Malheur NWR, reported that all their staff were safe and unharmed, as nobody was at the refuge during the time of the takeover. By that afternoon, Ammon Bundy called for other like-minded individuals to converge on the property and occupy it in protest of the government’s treatment of the Hammonds. Militia leaders claim they had 150 armed militiamen at the compound, ready to “kill or be killed.” Jon Ritzheimer himself posted a video to YouTube, claiming that he was ready to die in support of the Hammonds. An independent source claimed that their were no more than a dozen armed combatants at Malheur. As of January 4th, the militias at Malheur have started calling themselves the Citizens for Constitutional freedom.

 

In response to the takeover, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Oregon State Police have established a command center in Burns. Harvey County schools were closed as a safety precaution. The government has stated that while the FBI is closely monitoring the situation, it ultimately remains an issue of Harvey County and the State of Oregon at this time. While many residents of Harvey County support the Hammonds, they do not support armed militias entering the county, who are using the Hammond’s plight to further their own agendas. Many media circuits and Twitter users are critical of the government’s double standards regarding the situation. Many are saying that if a group of armed Muslims or Black Lives Matter activists took over Malheur NWR, the government would immediately respond with force, instead of allowing local authorities to keep a hands-off approach on the situation. It’s likely that the government is trying to stay out of the situation, as their dealings with the Weavers at Ruby Ridge 1992 and the Branch Davidians in Waco in 1993 ended in bloodshed. These two instances directly inspired Timothy McVeigh’s bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995, killing 168 people, including 19 children. As the government doesn’t want to deal with a resurgence in the militia movement that boomed during the 1990s, it’s most likely best for them to stay out until shots are fired.
We can only hope that the armed standoff in Oregon is quickly and peacefully resolved in the next several days.